


what you are about to do, do quickly

by couldaughter



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, Religion, the Simon/Kieren is actually quite incidental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 16:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2074923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon is the twelfth disciple of the undead prophet. He is an auxiliary, an outreach project in human form, and he doesn’t mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what you are about to do, do quickly

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: implied drug use, depression, anxiety, death (it's a show about zombies)

_For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Amen_

Simon is the twelfth disciple of the Undead Prophet. He is an auxiliary, an outreach project in human form, and he doesn’t mind. The other eleven have made no attempt to contact him, and he returns the favour.

He clawed himself out of the earth his parents gave him to. He killed his mother, and he can’t remember it. His resurrection had remade him in ways he didn’t understand, his body unrecognisable when the doctors held mirrors up to him and told him ‘this is what you are now.’ 

He woke up in the treatment centre, remembered his death, and for a long, terrible breath thought he was in Hell after all. Twenty five years of rock solid belief in the lack of an afterlife down the drain.

The ULA has taken him over. He doesn’t really remember how to be who he was before he joined, but he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is better off now. The commune is full of purpose, and he is almost in control of it. People listen to him. Of course, they all listen to His commands, almost from on high, delivered through videos and couriers and fed straight into their weakest links. 

He didn’t realise how much all this would mean to him, faith and hope and a common purpose, until it happened - until he could play music to a flat full of converts like himself and see all of them listening. _This is the only good thing that came out of the Rising_.

He doesn’t know how he ever doubted. The Undead Prophet makes it all sound so _simple_. It’s intoxicating. Which, in retrospect, is part of the problem.

_And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil._

The church his mother took him to as a child seemed to him like a vessel for lost souls. He was a very somber child, by all accounts, but he liked spending time there. The stained glass depiction of violent events (flaying, murder, crucifixion) were transformed by light into something to be admired. The spectacle of it persuaded him to keep attending even when the emptiness he felt during prayer confirmed him for a life of atheism.

Well, a first life. Not that he knew it at the time.

Stained glass windows stained his memories of slow Sunday mornings, sat stiff backed in the long wooden pews. Sermons about redemption and death melted into long minutes spent gazing, transfixed, at St Bartholomew’s shedded skin backlit by angelic light.

The seraphim gazed down at him from the ceiling, six winged and furious. Frightened, Simon stopped looking towards heaven, and fixed his eyes on Earth instead.

Eventually his mother stopped taking him, shortly after his first communion. He’d drunk the blood of God, and it tasted sour, burnt his throat on the way down. It seemed obvious to him, young as he was, that there was no God. He didn’t tell his mother, though. She smiled her way through most services, and he loved her smile.

_As we forgive those that trespass against us._

The Undead Prophet has chosen Simon for His mission. The orders had come through by video, His voice telling Simon that it was time. He hadn’t explained what would be done when the First Risen was found. Simon doesn’t think to question it - the Prophet is infallible, He rose incorruptible, He is a guiding light.

Simon smiles as he lays out his Rising clothes, the faded linen jacket and bloodstained tie more familiar than anything else in his second life. They’d returned it to him at the treatment centre, one arm ripped clean off and the lining in tatters. It’s a point of pride for Simon that, now, you can hardly see the stitching.

He doesn’t mention its original state to anyone else. He has a feeling that fixing it would be seen as sacrilegious. He consoles himself with the reminder that It would have been ridiculous to keep a jacket with only one arm, and tries to ignore the part of himself, completely in thrall to the ULA, that disagrees.

Amy has been chosen as well. She knows Roarton. She knows another Redeemed quite well, by all accounts, and rising in Roarton makes Simon take an interest. Kieren seems ordinary, for whatever value of ‘ordinary’ applies when you’re discussing the risen dead.

He’ll keep an eye out while he’s checking graves, in any case.

When they arrive in Roarton, sky stormy grey and threatening, he makes the sign of the cross almost on instinct. _Forehead, chest, either side, heart_. This is holy ground.

_And forgive us our trespasses,_

Simon spent his teenage years in a haze. He couldn’t find the energy to put effort into anything, spent whole weekends lying in bed staring at the ceiling. His mum found him a guitar from somewhere, and he practiced it to make her happy.

There wasn’t much point to anything. The universe was cold and unfeeling - he’d figured that out aged 10 and didn’t understand why anyone thought differently. He wasn’t really sure how to act ‘normally’, the way his dad clearly wanted him to - diagnosed with depression, stuck in a medicated cycle that would, eventually, lead to something decidedly more dangerous, ‘normal’ seemed further away than the sun.

He came out to his parents almost by accident. Dad had caught him with a boy, told mum, and then they both sat him down for a talk which lasted several hours.

Neither of them minded, which surprised him. Christianity, for all that he’d left it behind in a hardback pew years before, hadn’t changed its teachings. He’d have heard about it.

“Simon,” his mum had said when he’d asked her about it, his voice trembling. “Think of it this way. There’s what the church _says_ I should believe, there’s what _I_ believe - and then, of course, there’s you.” She smiled. “You’re my son. There’s nothing you could do that would make me love you any less.”

_Give us this day our daily bread._

He’s been in Roarton for only a few weeks when Kieren kisses him. Simon feels lighter than air.

And then, of course, everything goes wrong, although he doesn’t know it when he reports back to the Prophet with his news. He’s so, so happy, for the first time in either of his lives.

The Undead Prophet gives Simon a new mission. He stays frozen on the bed, smile faded, until Julian is gone.

The wall of the hotel room is hard against his back. He has to kill Kieren. The blinds in the window are dark blue. He has to kill Kieren. There are wolves staring straight at him. He has to kill Kieren.

He has to kill Kieren. Kieren is the First Risen. Kieren is beautiful.

The Prophet has given him a choice of weapon. The only choice Simon wants is the choice the Prophet would never give him. The bone saw is heavy in his hand, but the other knives looked heavier. Maybe if he makes it quick, the guilt won’t be so bad. He can’t disobey the Prophet.

He can’t disobey the Prophet. He _can’t_. Even thinking about it sends him further into a panic. The Prophet _saved_ him. The ULA saved him. There’s nothing he can do.

The trip back to Roarton seems to take an eternity and no time at all. Every second that ticks by is one second closer to killing Kieren. The clock is holding a knife to his throat.

For the first time since he left that church aged 10, scuffing his shoes on the graves laid into the floor, he prays to God for guidance. There’s no reply.

He doubts, and he leans on the wall of the graveyard, and he doubts.

He can’t kill Kieren, so he doesn’t. The wall sails past his feet, and he pushes Kieren to the ground. There’s a bullet in his shoulder, but the only thing he can feel is Kieren underneath his hands. He smiles.

_On Earth, as it is in heaven._

Sleeping rough in New York had presented its own unique set of challenges.

He had only been there for a month, would only be there for a week more, but he wasn’t sure if he’d last that long. Wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to. It was cold, far colder than he’d expected, and while there were plenty of people willing to claim Irish ancestry he had a feeling none of his family had stayed within twenty miles of Ellis Island when they’d emigrated.

Even if they had, he was four generations down the line. They wouldn’t know him from Adam, and wouldn’t care to either. His mum accepted him down to the needle marks on his arms, but that was his mum. She could forgive anyone, given time.

The glow of floodlights drew him in. It was the only way to explain why, thousands of miles from home and over a decade since the last service he’d attended, one final sermon slipping through his fingers like so many white lies, he stepped into a cathedral.

He was struck, instantly, by the size of the place. God’s house had expanded, in the decade he’d been away. Simon had a feeling the congregation hadn’t expanded at the same rate.

Candles battled with electric light throughout the knave. The arches were smooth stone that glowed gently, casting soft shadows across the vaulted ceiling. It was so beautifully pointless Simon thought he might cry.

Instead, he sat down on a pew next to one of the stained glass windows, the Last Supper, dim and featureless without sunlight to illuminate it. St Bartholomew was trapped in glass back in Dublin, forever cursed to consciously carry the weight of his own skin. Simon, twenty one years old and tired to the bone, felt that he understood the effort that required.

_Thy kingdom come, thy will be done_

After Amy’s funeral, Simon spends a lot of time alone. It’s not that he doesn’t spend time with Kieren, or Kieren’s family - it’s just that Amy’s bungalow is hollow again, and he can’t seem to sleep.

There are a lot of things occupying his mind. Kieren’s comments on the ULA are coming back to haunt him. At the time, he’d been offended.He’d always thought that all ULA converts were there of their own free will, to fight against the oppressive living but- well, now he was beginning to doubt even that.

He’d only joined the ULA because he’d had nothing else. Maybe that had been the case for everyone else. And, of course, he’d never met Him in person. There was no reason to believe that He was even one of the Redeemed, but faith had been much easier than critical thinking.

Then again, his mum had always said the point of faith was that you could never be sure about anything.

Kieren visits the bungalow a lot, and they talk. Simon likes it, because Kieren is special even without being the First Risen, even if he doesn’t believe it. Belief is apparently getting hard to come by in Roarton.

On Christmas Morning Simon finds himself in one of Roarton’s many empty churches. Sunlight streams in through the stained glass windows.

_Our father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name._

**Author's Note:**

> simon’s denomination is non specific partly because my experience of christianity is 1) a very specific kind of high church anglicanism 2) a baptist church held in my primary school’s school hall and 3) standard anglican with creepy stained glass, and i didn’t want to go for catholicism without proper knowledge
> 
> there is a st bartholomew’s in dublin, but as far as i know there is no creepy stained glass window of st bartholomew carrying his skin. that particular detail is from my own church, back when i still attended regularly. it’s just as weird as it sounds.
> 
> i acknowledge there are probably no cathedrals in new york that you can just walk into in the middle of the night. imagine it’s like the hunchback of notre dame. i did a lot of research for this fic, i promise.
> 
> title is jesus's words to judas before his betrayal. the dividers are the lord's prayer recited backwards, because when i go pretentious i really fucking go for it.
> 
> on tumblr @cpnmarvel, marginally less pretentious, a lot less adjectives


End file.
